It’s not just the gorgeous new look of Material Design that makes it great

We have written at length about Android 5.0 and the star of the Lollipop show, which is undoubtedly Google’s new “Material Design.” Much more than just a new user interface, Material Design is a set of best practices that are designed to help third-party app developers (and Google’s internal app teams) build apps that emphasize usability and consistency.

For users in the near term, the beautiful new look of Android 5.0 and apps that follow Material Design guidelines are the best thing about Google’s new design language. But as was covered in a recent interview, Googlers have revealed another important reason that Material Design is so great.

Thanks to Material Design, Android 5.0 Lollipop is characterized by a flatter graphical interface that uses bold colors and subtle shadows to create a sleek visual experience that feels as though it is made up of physical materials rather than just pixels on a screen. It’s a real pleasure to look at and use, but Android designer Nicholas Jitkoff pointed out another huge benefit of Material Design.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Jitkoff said that one of the biggest goals with Android 5.0 and Material Design was to create “a system for design that would work across all our platforms.”

Jitkoff added that apps should be able to “scale elegantly,” and that developers should also be smarter about how their apps appear on larger devices such as tablets. He said that developers often attempt to cram more content into their interfaces on larger devices, but often it’s better to display the same amount of content, and do so in a different way.

Android apps have historically not provided a consistent experience across devices of different sizes, so Material Design could go a long way in the effort to create a more unified Android experience.